It took a while but I eventually finished individually apologizing and thanking everyone that showed up. Now that everything has settled and I’m not in the heat of the moment I’m able to get a stronger grip on my emotions. It definitely feels like a huge weight has been pulled off my chest, but it’s not like it solved all of my problems. I still have to get over this Chrysalis nonsense before I hurt someone.

I will say though, when the ponies were giving me hope I could feel my Divinity swelling up and it made me realize how drained I was. Basically ever since I used Miracle and healed everyone in Canterlot I’ve been running on near empty. I just assumed it was like mana and it would regenerate over time, but I think it’s something that has to be actively done.

Now that I’m overflowing with it I don’t feel…tired. I know the Divinity is supposed to make me immune to morale affecting effects, but I assumed it only worked on magic or against a racial ability or something. What if I’m wrong though? What if the Divinity is actively reinforcing my mind, and when I ran low after using Miracle I got overwhelmed with the rush of trauma as it came flooding back in?

What if having an abundance of the energy prevents, treats, or suppresses the symptoms of mental illness? I definitely felt something close to depression the first two or three days, and the changeling PTSD was something I already had. I was having episodes and night terrors pretty frequently after the Summit, but it stopped once I gained Divinity. I think there’s enough evidence here to support my theory. Especially since the night terrors and episodes came back in full force when I was running low, and I’m not even supposed to dream in this state, let alone have nightmares.

Maybe I should unfilter my prayers at some point for at least 30 to 60 minutes per day. I should start going to the services Elytra hosts in the cave under the mountain, too. I need to start putting more effort towards supporting my followers.

“Ignis, are you coming to bed?” Luna asks as she starts to walk towards the side entrance of the throne room.

If my theory is right…my dreams should be safe now. I haven’t slept in three or four days, and physically I think I’m fine. But, I am exhausted. I don’t feel that existential type of tired that dulls everything around me and drains my motivation, but I actually feel tired. I want to sleep… “Yeah. I could really use some rest….”

3rd Person POV

The two lunar alicorns with their knight retired for the afternoon and as soon as the elf's head touched the pillow he was out cold. “I can’t believe he didn’t sleep the entire time he was holed up in here, refusing to leave. He might not need sleep, but it looks like it’s still quite helpful for him.” Luna idly comments as she and Nightmare lay down on either side of the elf.

“Despite knowing that either of us could suppress his night terrors he was still that afraid to fall asleep. He didn’t want to experience even a single second of whatever happened to him in that dream. Did you take a look at it when you suppressed it a few nights ago?”

“Nay. In the interest of time I made the decision to suppress it without diving in. I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to enter his dream. But, I think part of me just didn’t want to look. I’m not confident I would’ve been able to bear whatever I witnessed. I was able to get a rough idea of the contents of the dream just from hearing him mutter that whore’s name while telling her to get away. Even just thinking about it, I can feel my teeth grinding. The scouting party Tia sent out to the hive returned yesterday and confirmed there’s no trace of any changelings in that hive. She completely abandoned it and moved.” Luna replies quite sharply with a scowl and far off look in her eyes. “If she was still there I planned to go finish what I started.”

“She is quite the vile creature, isn’t she? I wouldn’t mind joining you for that when the night arrives that we find her again. What she’s done is unforgivable. Enough of this talk though, we should follow in his hoofsteps and rest. It’s already quite late compared to when we normally retire.” As if on cue Nightmare releases an involuntary and mighty yawn right after she says retire.

This yawn of courses causes Luna to release one as well. “Ah, indeed. We still have to catch him up on everything that happened for the few days he didn’t leave the room. I get the feeling we’ll need as much rest as possible for that conversation.”

Nightmare, who has already laid down fully and closed her eyes, just gives a knowing smile. “Oh if his emotions have returned to him he’s going to be quite angry.”

1st Person POV - Ignis

Thankfully I’m in my little personal dream dimension again with my house I imagined. I was going through my bookshelf and remembered the memory I unlocked at the Gala. The man who yoinked me from the Faywild and brought me to Earth. When he was dropping me off at my parents home he was holding a book. I somehow never put two and two together but that book was my spellbook. As in, the one I’m using now.

I can only guess I didn’t realize it sooner because the spellbook spends most of its time strapped to a harness on my back, similar to the way Noble Six carried Cortana, except my book is decently smaller. Does that mean he’s responsible for the book being nigh indestructible? Considering that Discord mentioned the book absorbs nearby mana and converts it into the Weave, and being strong enough that even he couldn’t put a scratch on it. That kinda narrows down who the man is, no?

I can’t think of many capable of doing such a thing. Especially when you consider that he was traveling freely between Earth and the Forgotten Realms. Is the person responsible for sending me here….fucking Ao?

There’s no way, right? That guy has only ever intervened with the world once in like 30,000 years. Why would he personally steal the soul of an elf child and send it to Earth? It couldn’t have been him, it just doesn’t make sense. But, if it’s not him who could it have been? Jergal? No that wouldn’t make sense either, even if you could argue stealing a soul would fall under the Death domain.

Does it really matter at the end of the day who sent me here? At this point I’m quite thankful to whoever did it. This shit with the dragons needs to end so I can test out the Blue Veil spell.

…

“Five more minutes…” I manage to mutter the phrase with slurred speech as someone continues to shake me.

“Wake up, fool. We want to talk before dinner.” I think that’s Nightmare. I’m really out of it right now. Luna wouldn’t call me “fool” like that though, then again Nightmare would call me idiot, not fool.

“Fine, fine. I’m awake. What do you want?”

“Sit up. We need to catch you up on what’s happened with the dragons while you were away.” It is Nightmare being stern with me. Figured.

“Pfft. You say that like I was gone to Trottingham or something. I was right here the whole time, I figured if something happened one of you would tell me. I guess this means I was wrong. You didn’t want to add anything to my burdens and took advantage of me finally taking a break. I get it. So, what happened?”

Now Luna takes over. “The dragons wish to negotiate a treaty. We’ve been mulling it over for two days now, but I think Tia is going to agree to at least meet with them. I doubt their terms will be anywhere near acceptable, and in all likelihood it might even be a trap.”

“Then why is she doing it?”

“Because that’s how she’s always been. Similar to you, she wants to end this as peacefully as possible.”

“That’s technically wrong. I don’t want this to end peacefully. I want this to end with as few deaths as possible for Equestria. Simplistically they seem similar but they are very different.”

“I suppose you’re right. Either way she’s going to demand reparations and some dragon to be held responsible for what happened here. When they decline that, I’m not sure what she’ll do. She seems determined to get through this as quickly and peacefully as possible.”

“The only thing we’re “getting” is even. Send me to their territory. I’ll crush them.”

Luna gives me a smirk. “Funny enough that is actually what I’m going to suggest to Tia after dinner. I want to have you on standby just a few minutes away from their main lair and when negotiations fail I’ll give you the command to cut loose. We could even use your presence there as a threat.”

“No, that's a bad idea. We don’t know what these things are capable of now that they have magic and have allied with the changelings. If the treaty falls through and they discover I’ve razed their home to the ground they might have a method to subdue you or one of the other alicorns. If that happens it’s the worst case scenario. We either attack them or we all attend the negotiations. One or the other. I, for one, vote to attack.”

“Then I have the same argument for you. Why would I send you into the heart of the enemy's territory when we still don’t know what they’re capable of?” Nightmare nods along as Luna speaks.

“Because I can teleport without using mana. My Divinity based Greater Teleport is completely different from what you use. I’m willing to bet even in some type of anti-magic scenario it’d still work. Even then I can always just blast myself away at full thrust. I’ve never gone all out while flying cause it’s impossible for me to keep my eyes open at those speeds from the wind, but if I’m in the empty sky just trying to get away as fast as possible I know for a fact none of them could keep up with me. However I can only reliably teleport myself with the ability. If you were to get an inhibitor ring slipped onto your horn I doubt I’d be able to create an opening long enough to fulfill the conditions required for me to teleport both of us. It’s going to be different this time Luna, I swear to you. I won’t lose.”

“I’ll bring up with Tia after dinner. If anything goes wrong this will be the last time I let you go off on your own like this. I swear you’re going to give me ulcers at this rate. I think you underestimate how much all of us worry when you do things like this.”

“...I’m sorry. I just hate the idea of this war already ending when we never had the chance to strike back. I want them to pay.”

“Revenge will never lead to peace, Ignis.”

“It will if I don’t leave any of them alive to continue the cycle.” Luna and Nightmare both go wide eyed and Luna looks a bit disturbed. “I wouldn’t do that, though. I know the Dragon Lord is lying to a majority of the drakes to manipulate them into thinking their attack is justified. I just wanna kill the Dragon Lord and Inferno. None of the others need to die.”

“So instead of an attack you want to perform an assassination?” Nightmare asks with a tone of voice I don’t quite appreciate.

“Yes.”

Luna just sighs and tells us to go to the dining hall.

…

“You’ll be teleported into the dragon's territory.” Celestia announces after she and Luna finish talking privately. I make a quiet “yes” and pump my arm.

“But, you are only to perform reconnaissance. We’ve sent a few of our best over there and none of them could get close enough to get us any valuable information. We don’t even know who the current Dragon Lord is, that’s how blind we are. Ideally you can find the Dragon Lord, report his name if you hear it, any abilities he demonstrates, and separately I want you to find where the dragons are learning and training their magic. If we can identify that we can send a couple of specially trained high altitude pegasus to observe that area for an idea on their magic capabilities as well. You are only to engage if you are engaged upon. You will maintain invisibility at all times, or some other method of becoming undetectable if you deem it safer. At any point you can use your Sending stone or telepathically call me with the codeword “dawn” and you’ll be teleported back here with no questions asked, zero delay. Do you understand?”

“Look around and figure out what they’re doing. Call home if shit hits the fan. Did I miss anything?” Celestia just gives me an exasperated sigh followed by a smile that screams “welp”. Nightmare is giggling but Luna looks dead serious.

“Ignis.” Luna hits me with an authoritative tone. “Do you understand? I am ordering you, do not engage.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” I move my right fist to my left pectoral and answer her with an equally serious tone. “When do I leave?”

“Whenever you’re ready. The negotiations are set to take place next Monday, so you have five days and six nights to gather information. If you can find enough information to come up with an air tight plan to kill the Dragon Lord and convince me that it’s safe and guaranteed, then I will call off the negotiations. Ideally in your plan I’d like you to include who the likely replacements will be for the Dragon Lord should you succeed. I’d hate to get rid of one that’s at least willing to meet us at the negotiation table for a replacement that decides to attack us everyday relentlessly.”

“That’s a big ask for five days. It’ll take a day or two just to come up with the plan. You wouldn’t happen to have given me an impossible task in hopes that I’d be discouraged to even attempt it, would you?”

“Absolutely not. I think you should do it no matter what. It’s more likely than not that we will not reach an agreement during this first session of negotiations. So in reality you have more than five days, but the first session is indeed in five days if you wanted to get this done before then.”

…

After giving Luna, Nightmare, and Force some proper farewells and kisses, I stood in front of Celestia with my Moonblade at my waist, my Mizzium fully attached and ready, and cast Invisibility. A few seconds later I find myself at the bottom of a relatively large volcano.

Holy shit I’m actually here. I didn’t think they’d really agree to this…time to redeem myself.

Author's Note

I was wondering if anyone would pick up on the fact that the Changeling PTSD incident happened immediately after he "dumped a ton" of Divinity into making a telekinesis wall to catch some projectiles. From a narrative standpoint I think making Divinity passively regenerate extremely slowly opens up alot of possibilities and interactions through actively regenerating it through your followers. It's also good from a balancing stand point.

But yeah basically it was noted that his hair reverted to normal after using that Miracle to heal everyone, and Luna commented that it must've drained him completely. Within minutes of being drained he started murmuring Chrysalis' name and suffering from the night terrors. Then he went through ups and downs, kinda mood swingy because he would regen a miniscule amount of Divinity only to use it up on mundane stuff, leading to eventually the incident at the training area. Now he's completely topped up on the god juice again and while still feeling guilty and regretful, he's not a complete wreck.

Another major(?) minor(?) reveal this chapter in the form of the spellbook. It's such a small detail to reveal but I wonder if it'll still get the theory junkies to cook up something. I love seeing how close you guys get to the plans, I actually prefer it when you're really close or spot on because it means I adequately left enough evidence or bread crumbs to reach that conclusion. Which means it shouldn't come outta nowhere since someone was/is able to figure it out. So by all means feel free to fire away.

Next few chapters should be pretty chill, so no more emotional damage for a while. Sorry if you liked being emotionally damaged :P

Thanks for reading! <3